47% of ACI HR Survey Respondents to Change Employers in 2016

Results from the ACI HR Solutions 2016 Travel and Hospitality Industry Salary and Employment Trends Report point towards the travel and hospitality industry bucking the doom and gloom forecasts seen in other industries with encouraging signs showing 44% of sector hiring managers actually expecting new headcounts in 2016.

ACI Founder & CEO, Andrew Chan said that while most thinking revolved around slightly modest industry growth in the coming year, as opposed to previous years, the 2016 survey results undoubtedly indicated positive market conditions.

“As in the previous surveys we have conducted since 2012, salary continues to be an important factor for candidates,” Mr Chan said. “A total of 41% indicated they would need to see an 11 to 22% salary increase when considering a new job. Notwithstanding, the importance of career development was also similar to recent results with a total of 69% of all respondents indicating that career progression was either ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ and only 5% saying career progression was unimportant.”

In a worrying trend, the report shows 30% of respondents felt career prospects with their present employer were ‘poor’ or ‘zero’ compared to 26% from last year’s survey, this percentage increasing for the third year running.

Perhaps more alarming for employers, 47% of respondents indicated that they would change employers in 2016, with a further 12% contemplating leaving the industry altogether.

Launched in January, the survey this year attracted just over 700 respondents from nine Asia Pacific countries ranging from company CEOs, managing directors and general managers through to middle management and front line staff.

The largest proportion of respondents (57%) was based in Singapore with Hong Kong (11%), China (6%) and Malaysia (5%) also providing strong samples.

Much of the recent years’ salary gains in Singapore and Indonesia seem to have contracted with a decline of -15% and -30% respectively.

More modest increases were seen by Thailand (12%), Malaysia (8%) and Hong Kong (4%) in this year’s report.

On actual highest average salaries from the survey, that once again belonged to Macau with (U$109,621), followed by Hong Kong (U$85,596). Indonesia posted the survey’s lowest average salary (U$44,492).

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